Paradise would be even deadlier with Mrs Brown
Death In Paradise BBC1, Tuesday Murder Is Easy BBC1, Wednesday/Thursday Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special RTÉ One/ BBC1, Christmas Day
Death In Paradise is my guilty pleasure. It drops on BBC1 in the darkest and coldest of months, January and February, and it brings Caribbean sunshine at exactly the time we need it. It also, of course, endlessly teeters on the tightrope of credibility. While there may be some jurisdictions in that part of the world that have to deal with so many murders, there can be few individual police stations that do.
The feature-length Christmas special is a recent addition, dating only from 2021, and while the entire edifice seems creaky at times, it just about gets away with it, which is more than any of the killers do when DI Neville Parker is on the case.
Ralf Little plays him as something of an obsessive nerd who really shouldn’t be on the fictional island of Saint Marie (played by Guadeloupe) at all. He hates the local food, and he hates the heat, so what is keeping him there, beyond being unnaturally busy, is anyone’s guess.
This year, a businessman whose firm was failing was found dead after a fall. It had all the hallmarks of a suicide, but the disappearance of a witness was fishy to say the least, and soon everyone was under suspicion. Patsy Kensit played the wife of the deceased but it was hard to tell if she was concerned at all, since her face barely moved throughout.
No spoilers if you haven’t watched, but the resolution seemed awfully familiar from episodes past, hardly a surprise given there have been so many episodes to date. What lifts the programme out of this predictable, if cosy, routine is the injection of a little comedy every week.
This time, in came in the form of Neville’s mother, played by Doon Mackichan. Melanie formed an immediate friendship with Catherine, the island’s mayor who runs a beach bar, and basically spent the entire episode drinking cocktails and chasing Frenchmen, while delivering a little motherly wisdom about her son’s tortured love life. It brought much-needed levity, as did a burgeoning romance (don’t worry,
I won’t say) that almost made me spit out the Caribbean punch I made to get into the mood in the first place for another visit to what has become Midsomer-on-Sea.
Altogether different, and with a much higher body count, was BBC1’s latest Agatha Christie adaptation, Murder Is Easy. In contrast to the book, which featured a retired policeman, this starred David Jonsson as a Nigerian recently arrived to work in London’s Whitehall in the Fifties. Oh, how splendidly it was recreated, with sumptuous sets, beautiful cars, and tailoring that Tom Ford would be proud of. On a train, Jonsson’s character, Luke Fitzwilliam, meets an elderly woman (Penelope Wilton, criminally underused) who tells him she is on her way to Scotland Yard to report a series of murders that have been explained away as accidents.
Before she can do so, she too is killed, in a hit and run, so Fitzwilliam takes it upon himself to go to an idyllic rural village to solve the murders himself. There, he forms an alliance with Bridget (Morfydd Clark), the soon-to-be-fiancée of the local lord, who is a commoner made good.
Soon, there are more deaths, but Jonsson doesn’t give up, and eventually identifies the killer. This would all be very normal were it not for the fact that the creative team added an extra layer of intrigue by making Fitzwilliam Nigerian, allowing for a sly commentary on the treatment of immigrants back then, and maybe even now. A local policeman’s instinct is to immediately arrest Fitzwilliam, simply because he looks different.
It all became a little thin over two hours on consecutive nights, but a stellar supporting cast, including old Shetland buddies Douglas Henshall and Mark Bonnar, brought it to colourful and vivid life, though best of all were the costume department and cinematographer, who made every scene look like a work of art. As an added bonus, the implied criticism of Empire and racism seems to have annoyed all the right people, which always is good for a laugh.
Sadly, there weren’t many of those in Mrs Brown’s Boys, shown on Christmas night on RTÉ One and BBC1. Brendan O’Carroll has a big heart, and sometimes he lets it take over at this time of year to deliver a message while forgetting to add a few good jokes.
This year, it was all about Fr Damien’s mother having a moment of clarity in her ongoing dementia, and remembering the words to Silent Night. That’s a lovely message of inclusivity at Christmas, but really all we want is a bit of oldfashioned smut and swearing.
Only at the end did we get what Brendan is famous for – physical comedy involving Christmas trees. This year, it fell on him while he was riding a rocking horse, a toy Agnes dreamed of owning when she was a girl, and at last was handmade by her family.
It just about got the special over the line but, in a pattern evident for a long time now, the necessity to have a Christmas-themed special has stifled a bit of creativity. The New Year show, tomorrow on BBC1 and next Saturday on RTÉ One, freed from such shackles, usually makes for a better outing.
Maybe Mrs Brown could do a crossover with Death In Paradise. Watching Agnes walk around Saint Marie in a cardigan would be a laugh in itself.